Apocalypse's Prelude

by Carl Damen

  The president rounded on Edarus. "Why am I the last one to hear about this, hmm?"

  Edarus didn't know what Mistaren's line was on this, but he jumped in as best he could, hoping he could calm the president as much as possible. "This is the first I've heard, too. I only know as much as Lob tells me. If he chooses to keep this secret, I can't tell you about it."

  Mistaren snorted and rubbed his arms. "Nice to see I'm the scapegoat in all of this."

  "Fuck scapegoat." An idea was beginning to form. Mistaren had said he had set everything up, and all Edarus had to do was sit back and reap the benefits. If that were true, then Mistaren was a loose end, and now was the perfect chance to eliminate him.

  Edarus pointed an accusing finger at the general. "Chuskus was a fluke, maybe, but this? No, this is too big a problem. If you suspected this, or had intel that this was possible, you should have told us."

  The president sat up. "You're saying Chuskus wasn't an accident?"

  "No, I don't think she was just an accident. I think she was a direct consequence of Allen's "reservations", and that what happened tonight could have been avoided had we known about Fendleton's plans." He paused and rubbed his chin. "I also think that something like tonight could—will happen again."

  Sighing wearily, the president slumped deeper into his chair and rubbed his eyes. "What do we do? Anyone got suggestions?"

  Mistaren cleared his throat.

  "Yes?"

  "Allen only scrubbed half of them, but for all we know he could have contaminated the whole bunch. The only option is to scrap the program and collect the Defenders."

  The president made no reply, and Mistaren continued.

  "It won't be easy, either. We can assume that Allen altered their programming, so they won't return to us with open arms and innocent intentions. We have to actively consider them as all rogue."

  Silence stretched across the room for nearly a minute. "Get out."

  "No sir, I'm serious. The defenders are too big of a—"

  Everyone flinched back from the president as he jerked upright and slammed his fists down on the table. "Get out! Get the fuck out of this office right now! Go!"

  Mistaren nodded, pried himself from his chair, and left. Edarus was sure this was the first time he had seen the general obey a direct order.

  "Edarus." Isaac had returned to his slumped posture. "What do we do?"

  "You mean besides hang Lob out to dry?"

  That actually earned Edarus a chuckle. "Much as I would like to… no, he's more dangerous against us than with us. The minute we out him, he starts spilling everything he has on us. So," he looked up at Edarus, "what do we do?"

  Edarus took a deep breath. "Only one thing we can do. We kill the program. Drop pretenses and try to make peace with the Defenders. Aside from that, the best we can do is prepare for war and hope the public doesn't start demanding blood. Either way ends bad."

  "No." Isaac shook his head and tapped the desk lightly with the flat of his hand. "No. We can't kill this."

  "What do you mean, 'no'? You've ben trying for a reason to kill this thing for—"

  "The time to kill it was before, back when it was a secret. Now the people know, or at least have reason to doubt us, and anything we do to acknowledge the program will just be an acknowledgment of guilt."

  "So you just want us to walk around with our heads up our asses and wait for the next time a rogue Defender tries to off you?"

  "Next time we'll be ready. Next time, we'll have security, next time we'll have the scramblers—"

  "Yeah, no, that won't work. See, we had the scramblers this time, and we used them. The scramblers—which are specifically designed as Defender deterrents—are now public knowledge. The public knows about them, the program's blown. We can't pretend the cat isn't out of the bag on this one."

  Isaac glared at him. "We can and we will. We acknowledge nothing Lanlin said, we jump on top of the story, and we ride this out as long as we can. We stay alive, and no one goes to jail. Agreed?"

  Edarus threw his hands up and slumped back in his chair. "This is stupid. I can't believe you're doing something this stupid."

  Julia leaned forward and raised her hand fractionally. "There are ways to fix this without going public. We just reprogram the rest of them, make sure they stay low. Get what's-his-name, the other scrubber, involved."

  Before she finished, Edarus began shaking his head. "He'd have to be in close. And we don't know which of them will recognize him and go rogue on us. I'll say it again: we can't do this thing on the sly. It. Is. Over."

  The president ignored him. "Eli, time for you to earn your paycheck."

  At the far end of the room, Eli was still engrossed in his silent sobs.

  "Eli!"

  Eli looked up and tried to smile.

  "We need you, okay? We need a story for Lanlin, alright?"

  Eli thought for a moment, then nodded. "Okay, yeah, he's, um, he's…"

  The room grew silent as Eli thought and Edarus fumed.

  The silence was broken when the vice president gasped and jumped out of her seat. "We're in the White House."

  All eyes focused on her.

  "Someone just tried to kill you in the White House, and we're still here, in the goddamn Oval Office."

  "Damn straight." Isaac pounded the table and struck a proud pose. "The SS tried to evacuate me, but I'm not hiding after this. No, the president doesn't go skulking off and hiding after some nut tries to kill him!"

  "Shit." The VP looked around in confusion. "You're—you're crazy, Isaac. You can't do this. You're here at ground zero with who knows how many Defenders out there and you refuse to take the only sensible course of action." She shook her head and blinked several times. "I didn't sign up for this. I—I—" She didn't finish her sentence, but everyone knew what she was thinking about. "I'm done. I hereby resign, whatever."

  "Hey, where are you going? You can't just leave!"

  She ignored him and walked out the door.

  At least two down. Edarus swallowed, and wondered if he should follow her.

  The president snorted and gestured in the former vice-president's direction. "We don't need her anyway. Don't need pessimism, don't need undermining." He nodded to himself. "It won't be pretty, but we can ride this out."

  There was somber head-nodding around the room.

  "You know what? Fuck you." Edarus stood. "You all didn't see him alright? You didn't see him like I did. He was pissed off, and he was not going quietly. We got lucky. What happens when ten of them come together, huh? I'd think a little harder about keeping up the charade before you have to face real power. The only way any of us stay alive at this point is if they let us." His speech done, he followed the former Vice President out.

  "Where are you going?" Isaac's icy voice stopped Edarus at the door.

  "Home. Amanda's worried, it's late, and there's nothing I can do tonight." He turned back to the president. "Tomorrow… tomorrow I'll be here to do the best I can to get you through this shitstorm. You may not listen to me, but I'll try my best."

  Isaac nodded, but in no other way acknowledged Edarus's presence.

  Outside the office the corridor was bright, and a frail old man in his undershirt sat under a painting of a horse. He rose and strode over to Edarus, his lithe movement belying his age.

  "You did good in there. Said what needed to be said. Just got off the phone with head of security; they've pieced together the president pro tempore; three down." He reached to pat Edarus on the shoulder.

  Edarus ducked the arm, grabbed the front of Mistaren's shirt, and slammed him into the wall. "Listen," he hissed, "I'll do it, I'll stick with your Q-bomb shit, but we're through, you hear me? No more manipulating me, no more dropping little surprises like Lanlin on my family, alright? You'll get what you want, but leave me the hell alone!" He released the General and Mistaren slid down until he was standing on his own.

  "Whatever you say." He turned and strode away.

  E
darus didn't notice. All he saw was the smile Mistaren wore throughout their whole confrontation...

  17

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 7

  Edarus Latterndale rose from the floor, his clothes soaked in blood, and stepped up to the platform. He held up a large pistol and spoke, his voice lost in the dull roar of the ball room. Merd Lanlin turned to stare down at Latterndale, looked as if he were about to speak, and then was obscured by a pulsing white circle.

  "Shit." Alice leaned forward and paused the video. "Needs to buffer."

  "Nah," Jack said, "won't do any good. Their servers are probably overloaded."

  They sat in Jack's cubicle, surrounded by five of their coworkers, staring at the video on Jack's second screen. Since Jack began working, his cubicle had become the the most popular meeting place in the office; older employees remembered him from his previous time at the firm, and younger employees were intrigued by his story. When word of last night's events began to circulate through the office, many of Jack's coworkers had begun to circulate into his cube to air their views on what happened.

  "Ten bucks says their servers crash," someone called from the back.

  "Its not going to crash," someone answered, "it's the state channel. They have enough resources to handle this kinda thing."

  "Not something this big." Alice shook her head and leaned back into her chair. "I still can't believe this happened."

  Walter, a structural engineer whom Jack had worked with over a decade ago, scooted forward between Alice and Jack. "I heard that it was successful, and the reason it's taking so long to get an official statement is that they're trying to find a convincing body double."

  "No, this guy kept his camera on the whole time, and you can see Latterndale getting pulled out."

  Walter shrugged. "I don't know. Just what I heard." He sighed. "Damn, it's just so surreal, you know? I mean, Kennedy was just a bullet or three, all the theories aside. But this? What the hell was this?"

  "Just special effects," Jack said, refreshing the page in an attempt to play the video. "They know that whatever happened all the conspiracy nuts'll over-inflate it, so they're doing the job for them. Whatever really happened is really embarrassing, and they don't want anyone to know."

  "Like what?"

  Jack shrugged while he absently juggled a pen. "I don't know. Maybe someone in upper management went nuts and blew up the ballroom."

  "Why—no, how would they get everyone together in less than a day's time to film a cover up that is going to be leaked by AmeriNews?" Alice asked.

  "Body doubles." Jack lost control of his pen and watched it roll across the floor.

  "Alright," Walter said, "for the sake of argument, let's assume that everything was real. This guy really could levitate stuff and read people's minds and stuff. You think he's telling the truth?"

  "You mean about being made by us?"

  "Yeah. I know we've done some pretty bad stuff in the past but this..." he shrugged. "I don't know; it just seems so...North Korean."

  Alice rolled her chair back and forth, her lips pursed in concentration. "I don't really support what Lanlin did; I'm pretty well anti-violence. But I really think he was telling the truth; why would he lie?" She smiled, looking embarrassed. "I've already joined a pro-Defender rally for this Saturday."

  Jack snorted. "Sounds like something my niece would do."

  "Well, she sounds pretty smart—civically minded, at least. What do you think, Jack? Did we do this or not?"

  Jack thought for a moment. He had seen some of the video and heard Lanlin's testimony; it all seemed too fantastical to be true. And when the White House made an official statement, it would of course denounce Lanlin as some sort of foreign agent. What was it that Amanda said? If the government made an immediate statement, it was a cover-up? So if they'd waited this long… "He's lying. It's all part of his attack on the president, to discredit him if he couldn't kill him."

  "So I guess you're a big government kind of guy, then."

  "No, I just can't imagine us giving someone psychic abilities and then not exploiting it for everything its worth."

  "So you admit he really had psychic powers?" Walter said, catching onto Jack's phrasing.

  "I'm still having trouble believing that."

  Someone at the back of the cube retrieved the pen and began to juggle it. "Okay, screw the rest of the video; we probably all watched it earlier. White House have a statement yet?"

  Jack turned back to his computer and ran a search. "Nothing. Statement from the Pope about Lanlin's powers, though."

  Alice leaned forward. "Do tell."

  "Let's see. Careful examination of scripture, consulted with many religious leaders, da-da-da-da… Okay, basically it's either a corrupted revelation of God's power or a show of the adaptive powers of nature; he hasn't decided." He glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. "Ooh, and it's late and I forgot my lunch. I hate to leave this conversation unfinished, but I've got to head out."

  Walter dropped a hand onto Jack's shoulder. "First, update on that tower."

  "Yeah, sure." Jack closed the web browser and opened Cohen's design software. "Alright, let's walk you through this…."

  The tower stood out in a bright white wireframe over a dull blue background. The only remnant of the original Sky Crest was the Central Maintenance Core, though it now stretched upward for over a mile. Around it, Jack had built a complicated series of colossal dodecahedrons that spiraled around the core in a triple-helix. Each of the dodecahedrons in turn had traditional flat floors inside. Due to the shape of the supporting structures, there were occasional gaps between the outer layer of glass and the triple-helix, and Jack had built these gaps into atriums that stretched vertically for several stories.

  The mall that in reality jutted out from the tower had become moat-like, encircling the tower's half-mile wide base. Twelve smaller, diagonally-tilted towers projected up from the pit to join the central tower as buttresses.

  Walter nodded appreciatively. "Pretty nice..."

  "Is it workable?" Alice asked.

  Jack shrugged. "I ran stress tests. As far as the computer's concerned, all it needs is an underwriter."

  "Yeah..." Walter sighed. "Not likely to happen."

  "What's that mean?" the man behind him asked.

  "It means that with a major terrorist attack on the president, the economy's going to take a nose dive, and luxury towers are out of the question."

  The other man responded, and Jack took the opportunity to slip quietly from his cubicle.

  He didn't have a firm idea of where he was going; there were a few good restaurants nearby, and two or three convenience stores. He had made it about two blocks before he realized he wasn't particularly hungry, he just wanted to get out of the office, to digest the events of the previous evening.

  It was tempting to dismiss them as fabrications. Psychic super-soldiers were simply too fantastic to be real. To accept them at face value would be a tremendous leap of faith, one Jack wasn't sure he was willing to make. For him, the paranormal was simply the mixing of con men and credulous victims, the Bible was exaggerated folk-lore, and extraterrestrial life was single-celled organisms living in ponds on the moons of Jupiter. That was life, that was normal. If he accepted at face value what had happened, if the walls of that normalcy could be breached that much, what else could find its way through the cracks?

  Possibly nothing, he realized. Psychic super-soldiers didn't necessarily entail… unicorns, say. And, in all honesty, the Defenders weren't entirely unanticipated; he had seen the rumors online, the supposed legal foundation...

  The government would be aware of that, too. Could it be they were covering something, or trying to pick a fight, and just used a convenient story everyone already believed?

  Jack shook his head and blinked. This second guessing wasn't helping. He'd simply wait for more evidence to sway him one way or another.

  The sounds of a crowd on the sidewalk ahead pulled
Jack the rest of the way out of his thoughts, and he looked up to see a swarm of people gathered outside an Army recruiting office, most carrying signs, and several wearing crudely printed "Defend the Defenders" t-shirts.

  Theses people didn't need any more evidence to make up their minds.

  One of the t-shirt wearers, a frizzy-haired man wielding a megaphone, was in the middle of a tirade. "—have been victims of the military-industrial complex for too long! Who suppressed American workers in the 19th century? Them! Who usurped South American sovereignty in the 20th century? Them! Who cut the legs out from under public health care in the 21st century? Them!"